These kinds of covers mostly appear on a certain sort of urban fantasy, and that sort usually has a female protagonist. So it's going to skew female regardless -- but no, I don't think male heads get treated the same way.

And the same artist — Cliff Nielson — did both my City of Bones cover and A Companion to Wolves. He also put a cropped-headed boy on my third book, City of Glass. I've never specifically known where the trend started, but I always guessed it started in teen with the Gossip Girls book covers which always cut off the top half of the characters' heads. (I've seen the covers of the GG books in other countries, and they're exactly the same photos, but with the full faces shown. So maybe it's an American marketing thing.)

The random body part school of cover art is more gender egalitarian overall; but the decapitated torso sub-school is very heavily female (and legs without bodies show up a lot in chick-lit, so that one gets skewed too). But none of the various random body parts are entirely exclusive to females. I suspect it's because more women end up on covers overall than men.

Initially, I had requested that we not see her face b/c I am intentionally vague abt physical traits (in an attempt to not anchor my image of a character in the reader's eyes). That said, when I picked the model she was so close to how I see Ash (the MC) that I relented & said "oooh, we could have a full face). I was lucky enough to see the proofs from the whole shoot (more than 1000 photos). Many had the face too, but the one Alison selected was this one. *shrug* There were others with her face that were gorgeous too.

BTW, my kids loved this. We're Lolcats fans here (& of course, fans of the loldogs site too). Thank you for the smile.

I've noticed this trend and wondered whether the purpose is to make the cover woman somehow generic. Not sure why that would be desirable--maybe to allow for future cover designs in the series by different artists?

. . . which is quite close to the content of the discussions I had with the art designer when we were talking abt our plans & possibilities for the cover of Wicked Lovely :) The initial agenda we had was to avoid imposing one person's view of the character's image b/c I don't do so in the story itself.

Sadly, this is something of a trend in online personal ads, too. I've seen several guys with just torso shots on their ads, others with just an eye, or blurred/otherwise obscured pics. (From what I've seen, the torso or eye may be the best selling point of some of these guys -- it certainly isn't their personality.)

Second, in all seriousness, I prefer not to see full faces. As a reader I like the mystery it conveys, and I'd rather leave the appearance to my own imagination. As a writer, when my Luna covers had full faces (OK technically half a face with the first one, but it was one side instead of forehead cut off), it changed my image of the character as I wrote each successive book. Instead of picturing the woman I'd created in my head, I pictured the model.

And I've been adamant about *never pls pls* depicting the male characters on my covers. I need to stay attracted to them from book to book. :-)